RichardItaly: Week 4-Kilns and Clay...and stuff....!!

The 3rd week ended with us finishing up our Art History class and the Italian Bowl/Jeopardy style contest. A friend and I ended up spending the weekend in the town of Florence. It had already been talked about that we would be going there on Sunday and going to a museum called the Galleria Academia. Nick and I decided to leave on Saturday, spend the night and check out the town and just meet everyone at the museum on Sunday.

So, Nick and I left and we got to Florence and checked into our hostel. We got there no problem because the trains are pretty straightforward once you get used to them. We got to Florence, and the first thing we do is get Mcdonalds. I know it seems a little American to do that, but, you really get used to things and we just decided to go ahead and get it because we missed it.

We got that, and it was only a five minute walk to our hostel. The hostel ended up turning out to be really nice. The staff was super helpful, they spoke english and everything was pretty clean.

After, me and Nick just walked around Florence all day. We got to see one of the markets that sold nothing but expensive jewelry, I got a few clothes that were pretty nice and some nice shoes on top of that which was meant for a dress up type night if it were to ever come around. ;) We also got to check out some of the bridges and see the canal and got some pretty great pictures. After being in Florence for only an hour, it was already my favorite city in Italy. It just seemed that it had more history, it was much cleaner and everything seemed much more convenient than the other cities that we had been to.

The following day, which was the Sunday, we got up, checked out and went and met everybody at the museum. We probably waited in line for about an hour and got in. There was a no picture taking policy, so I do not remember much from the museum. There were a lot of unfinished sculptures and a lot of busts of some famous people. The thing that I do remember however, is the main reason that we had gone there, and also something that I had studied in a previous class. It was the statue of David by Michelangelo. Its a huge statue depicting a character from the bible from his fight with Goliath. Its very big, detailed and incredible because you look at it and you observe the expression on his face, wondering what is going through his mind and wondering, at which point in his fight is it depicting. It was very incredible.

As for the rest of the day in Florence, I can’t really say much. It just spent a lot of time walking around. We did, however, find this really nice spot that overlooked the entire city. There were a lot of people, it had a nice breeze; it was nice to kick back and relax up there with a beer and just oversee everything. We were there for a few hours, and left for home to just fall right asleep when the time came. It ended up being a very enjoyable weekend.

The rest of the week was a back to the grind type of thing. We had class Monday-Thursday and it consisted of our Italian class and our clay class. We had finished up Art History the previous week and so we were done with that. But, classes kind of went the same as they usually do. Italian was the same. Basically just learning another language and dealing with the frustration of rules that you aren’t used to because its a different language. It’s quite weird. You have one verb, but, depending on who you’re talking to or how you’re talking to them, it completely changes the form of the verb and so you have to remember the 6-7 different forms of it. On top of that, you have male and female words, plurals, and articles that just keep changing. I’m sure with time I’ll get it down. :)

As for clay, we had to have our second project finished up which it could have been anything. It could be anything you want to make or something inspired by work that we’ve seen over the last few weeks. I spent quite a few hours frustrated because I didn’t really know what to do at all. I started out with a mask, scrapped the idea and just kind of played with clay, until reverting back to the original idea because I couldn’t think of anything at all. I came up with that idea because of previous sites that we visited, there were a lot of theatrical masks. Also, while in Naples, I walked by this shop almost everyday, and it had masks out in front that peaked my interest. So, in the end, I decided to just go with that.

For clay, we also had to build a kiln. A kiln is kind of like a giant oven that’s completely enclosed. We made it with bricks that the villa had. We tried to do it with everyone, but, there were just too many people and everybody kinda of just got in the way of each other. We did end up getting the kiln made and by the end of the week, we got the clay pieces that we made fired up.

For the firing of our pieces, we had to find a metal object that we could put our piece in. We then wrapped our piece in paper, put it in the metal object, put them at the bottom of the kiln, and filled it up completely with sawdust and burned it. We all took turns watching, as to make sure that it didn’t burn the countryside or something. it took around 12 or more hours I think, and the pieces came out black like they were supposed to. Its a type of firing that was done by the Etruscans when they did there stuff a few thousand years ago.

Something else that we did this week, which was on the Wednesday, was that we went to town that has been doing pottery since around the 15th or 16th century. Its a business that has been in the same family since then, and they make pottery and paint it. We toured and it got to watch someone paint and make a vase in a matter of minutes! The skill that they had was incredible. But, the main reason that we went there was to paint a bowl and plate of our own. We had arranged for it to happen and come up with our own designs prior to it and do it on the plate and bowl.

Creating the design wasn’t really a problem at all because we were able to do it on paper. when we got to the actual bowls and plates, it was a lot harder because we couldn’t actually touch them or else the glaze on them would fall and crumble. So, trying to paint a line with a free floating hand was hard for me. I wasn’t too happy with the design because of the crooked lines, but, it was still a fun experience none the less.

The 4th week ended by everybody taking a trip and going to a chocolate festival in Perugia. Its called Eurochocolate and is supposed to be one of the biggest chocolate festivals in Europe and in the world. its a 9 day festival where the streets are just lined up with vendors and tents, each of them having something to do with chocolate. There were so many different types and things that had to do with chocolate that it was a bit overwhelming. There were different brands, to different chocolates, and even different types of liquid that had to do with chocolate. There were even alcohol based things that were being sold that had mostly chocolate in them.

We spent some time getting there, which wasn’t really too bad. Just a couple buses and some taxi’s with walking, and we were there. My and a friend of mine just kind of walked around all day. I didn’t really try too much. I had a couple chocolate bars that were pretty good, bought a hot chocolate that had rum in it, and bought a couple alcohol bottles of chocolate that were very good. In the end, it ended up being really fun.

We spent the rest of the weekend just kind of lounging around because we only went to the festival once.